New Mac Company Introduces the World's First GPU-powered Image Editor

Founded by brothers Saulius and Aidas Dailide in 2007, the Pixelmator Team today introduced Pixelmator, the world’s first GPU-powered image editing tool that provides everything needed to create, edit, and enhance still images.

“Finally, an innovative, fast, and easy-to-use image editor for Mac OS X that brings the power of todays expensive image production tools to every Mac user at a very affordable price,” said Saulius Dailide, Pixelmator Team. “We think all Mac people—home users as well as professionals—will find Pixelmator very usefull and fun”.

Built from the ground up on a combination of open source and Mac OS X technologies, Pixelmator features powerful selection, painting, retouching, navigation, and color correction tools, and layers-based image editing, GPU-powered image processing, color management, automation, and transparent HUD user interface for work with images.

Mac iSight users will enjoy Pixelmator’s New Layer from iSight feature that allows taking a snapshot with Mac’s built-in video camera and adding the snapshot as a layer in composition. The Photo Browser palette in Pixelmator offers quick access to iPhoto Library, albums, Smart Albums, and pictures in user’s Pictures folder. Best of all, the user can just drag-and-drop any of those images as layers in Pixelmator composition.

Another very important feature of Pixelmator is Automator support. Very powerful Pixelmator actions in Automator allow the user to quickly enhance, resize, or transform images, add any special effects, and even export images to more than 100 different file formats.

Pixelmator is based on Core Image and OpenGL technologies that use Mac’s video card for image processing. Core Image and OpenGL utilize the graphics card for image processing operations, freeing the CPU for other tasks. And if a high-performance card with increased video memory (VRAM) is present, one will find real-time responsiveness across a wide variety of Pixelmator operations, including editing tools, color correction tools, filters, and more. Pixelmator is lightening-fast on the latest PowerPC and all Intel-based Macs.

Comments

Very interesting, I look forward to trying Pixelmator out. For a number of years, I’ve been looking for a decent image editor, but something that also has decent painting abilities as well. Think of a combination between AppleWorks’ Draw & Painting, and throw in a dash of Photoshop Elements. That is the application I’ve been looking for. I’ve tried out a number of applications, but nothing ever felt 100% right. This application might be what I’ve been looking for.

Photoshop is powerful, but I don’t necessarily need a bazooka to go duck hunting, either.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! ;^)
Seems great.
The screenshots, the price, the features, the use of Apple technologies (Automator… ), amazing :^)
A question:
Do you use some kinds of plug-ins for CI filters, so third party devs may add their own effects (via for ex. the /Library/Graphics/image Units folder)?
TIA

Is Pixelmator for 8 bit color files or will it handle 16 bit or 32 bit as well? I’m especially interested in your handling of the FITS file format for astrophotography. The interface looks clean & handsome!

It is very hard to tell if we’ll support 16/32 bit. Actually Pixelmator is already able to open and edit them, but I don’t think that we will test or advertise that in Pixelmator 1.0. In fact, sometimes we are surprised by Pixelmator’s capabilities by ourselves – it is based on very powerful open source technologies and in 1.0 we are taking advantage of just 10% (if not less) of those. So, if you see that 16 or 32 bit images are working in Pixelmator – don’t blame me 🙂

Quick question, would I be able to paint in different blending modes like photoshop? As in grab a brush, set the blending mode to overlay and paint at 30% opacity? If the painting features are that advanced, then I’m completely sold, but meh, even if not for $59 I’m completelyl sold anyway!

Looks very cool guys. Screen shots have lots of wow. Interface is … unknown; it will take hands on to use it and comment wisely. Will it do paths as well as pixel work? And do you have the “quickmask” that Photoshop uses? Any chance of doing DXF format (CAD; document exchange format)? Keep up the good work …

I know it might be a little early, but after perusing Pixelmator’s features and specs I have a request to make: along with iLife and iPhoto, is there a chance you could support Aperture’s library as well?

We use a third party framework called iMedia Browser and from what I’ve read Aperture support is a little buggy. We would love to fix it ourselves but right now we are really busy on other features. Since stability is one of our top priorities we must be very careful with adding features like this one.

One image-editing program Adobe Photoshop has never replaced is Studio/32. If you ever run out of ideas for features to rip off, find a copy of this (Classic only) app. Just an example:

You can draw a rectangle *precisely* by pointing roughly where you want to start, press 8 for 800% view (centered on the mouse) click EXACTLY where you want to start drawing the rectangle, press shift-2 for 1/2 (50%) size view, drag (mouse still down) to roughly where you want to stop, press 8 for 800% view (centered on the mouse) and move to exactly where you want to end and release the mouse.

I’ve long wished for an intuitive Photoshop-like application for the Mac! This wil be wonderful. I do technical artwork for book authors, and currently rely on a mix of OmniGraffle and GraphicConverter to get my job done. I simply cannot get my head around PS, its design is so foreign to my mindset. I hope Pixelmator will eventually grow to include Adobe Illustrator functionality, too, as AI suffers from the same malaise that PS does, and is just as unusable. Thx.

Its a funny mail, I think that this app is underpriced, I mean its too cheap ! I wanna be clear, if the performances are really good, this fabulous app needs to have the right price for it!
If its a success, think about it !
You have a company and you need results ! To make this app more and more powerful in the future.

Friendly (also, take a look at the price of Lineform from freeverse.com 79.95 vector graphic app), I think a good price is between 80 to 90 USD.

Looks great so far! Can’t wait to try it out if there’s going to be a demo version.

One thing I’d love to see at some point would be the ability to handle RAW files. Getting all the native versions working would probably be very difficult, but perhaps you could use Adobe’s DNG format instead?

This looks good!
Will there ever be any vector-tools in Pixelmator? The best way to make icons and scaleble grahics is by using vectors. The vectors in Photoshop works great except there’s no vector line-tool.

Man-o-man! I am excited about this! I have way outgrown iPhoto(but I like the interaction and management). I just don’t have the time for the Photoshop learning curve. And I don’t think I have “need” for Aperture(also a long learning curve).
PLZ keep it simple with a good guide for noob’s.
I also agree that this could/should sell for more if it works as advertised.

I have been a long time Photoshop user and have never even considered using anything else. This is the first program that I may consider replacing my all to expensive image editing program. But I also think this price is too low. I want to see this company thrive and feel $89-99 would be more than fair. I am excited to see this application grow and give Adobe a run for their money.

Hi! I´m impressed!
This is what we all have waited for! (almost all I think…) The use of Apple´s core-tech is of course the future. And, I think someone else already mentioned, PS is in many ways is in the corner with a lot of wet paint on the floor. I use Aperture AND PS a lot and I really want to see what you guys have in the basket to compete with that combination. I can see that you´re in the game for true and that Adobe will have to watch out… And the price!!! (Can you really make it that low?) My true respect and my good wishes!

i really would like to see a feature that makes it possible to work with raw files and to change the development settings oft the raw later. adobe currently does that with smartobjects in cs3 but its extremly slow. it resembles somewhat the nested compostitions approach of aftereffects.

then please implement an option to use a table layout GUI. there is a reason why adobe switched from floating to flexible table layout in cs2.

if those two features make it in the program i would by it right away.

Wow, am a graphic designer ive been using photoshop since PS 3.0 i got ADobe Creative Suite 3 , and well, it seems that they are more windows thinkers right now, because, there’s, no apple core tech support, and the interface looks like windows 2000, ugly and outdated , and the reqs, for the same things we did, and do all the time , seems to be stupid, the lack and slow of this last Adobe CS3 , it doesnt Work With OS X, it works over OS X like a BullDozer, i used almost every image editor, corel draw, PaintShop pro, , and boy, i can tell you that, this really looks like the future in your hands,

Good luck! I’ll anxiously await the chance to beta test your app as I can’t stand feeding the Adobe coffers any longer. I just can’t take how bogged down CS2 makes my Macbook Pro Core Duo with 2 gigs of ram. Bring it on boys, bring it on!

I really don’t agree with this blog post. Even so, I had searched with Bing and I have found out you are right and I had been thinking in the improper way. Continue producing high quality articles such as this.